


Check-in

by bluepointragdoll



Category: NCIS: Los Angeles
Genre: Apologies, Banter, Breathplay, Callen needs his head checked, Episode Tag, Episode: s02e15 Tin Soldiers, Established Relationship, M/M, Makeup Sex, failure to communicate like sane people, the first time they did this they broke the house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-02
Updated: 2013-03-02
Packaged: 2017-12-04 03:00:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/705760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluepointragdoll/pseuds/bluepointragdoll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode tag for "Tin Soldiers"; letting someone strangle you is <i>like</i> an apology, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Check-in

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goshawk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goshawk/gifts).



The safe-house is a compromise, because nowhere else really works. 

Sam's place comes with Michelle and the girls. And while it would be the furthest thing from true to say that G isn't welcome there, or that there are any secrets anywhere when it comes to him, Sam and Michelle - it's not for this, the inverse-mirror of anything they could actually share, and even the spare room at Sam's would be wrong. Motels are cheap; hotels are expensive; and they're both sterile and wrong, too. The new house is new, and G still hasn't as yet bothered to get a bed, and Sam would bitch. A lot. At length. Probably in a couple of languages while was at it, sticking to the ones G doesn't know just to be an asshole and make G either ignore it or ask - and before the new house, well, there wasn't one and Sam bitched even more about the other places G's used to sleep. 

So they use the safe-house. Hetty probably knows; Hetty knows everything. But she hasn't told them off yet, not even obliquely, and considering her current agenda of . . . what could you even call it? Codependence-training? Reliance-building? Needy-ness-conditioning? whatever it was, considering that, he might actually just ignore her. Pointedly. 

Actually, if she gives him grief about this, he might just push it and go down on Sam somewhere out of the way at work. After making it clear to Eric that any videos existing, let alone being stored or passed on will result end in his exceedingly painful demise, right after G's taken a sledgehammer to Eric's precious computers. While he watches.

Both thoughts are probably way closer to certain edges than G really wants to be, though whether those are cliff-edges or knife-edges is hard to figure. It doesn't really matter, except that it's why they meet here. It's a more or less unspoken agreement except for the first time, when they hadn't decided to skip the part where they beat each other to shit with fists and words and go more or less right to the part that mattered. That time, they'd had to talk. Not so much anymore. 

The deadbolt in the white door sticks like it always does, and the door scrapes the sill as it opens. G drops his keys and his jacket on the floor just inside the hall, which in the circumstances probably counts as an incendiary act or at least an inflammatory one. Or possibly the other way around. 

It definitely counts as something that will irritate Sam which, given the circumstances, is _possibly_ not the wisest thing ever. Considering how much right (to be fair) Sam already has to be irritated. 

G officially does not give a shit. 

On the other hand, he does kick off his boots, which he thinks he should get points for. On the other _other_ hand he leaves them in the middle of the hallway, which probably counts against him. 

Which - 

When the door opens, on cue comes Sam's voice saying, " . . . seriously, G? _Seriously?_ " 

G doesn't bother responding, just leans on the back of the very sad couch while he listens to Sam actually hang up his coat and possibly G's coat too, as well as kicking G's boots out of the way. "You are the living end, you know that, right?" Sam adds, actually coming into the living-room as G stands up. 

"That sounds like something your grandmother would say," G points out, and doesn't get any more said or even thought before Sam's hand planted in the middle of his chest sends him back hard into the wall, with Sam right in his face to follow. 

"Shut up," Sam says, and then his mouth on G's and his hand at G's throat make deciding whether or not to follow that order kind of a moot point. 

There's always the pulse: one second of inhale when the adrenaline comes without asking, ready for him to do with it whatever he wants. A flash and tightening under his skin, lightness in his head as everything contracts around muscle and bone and most people, _most_ people would be, if not dead, at least in a lot of fucking pain right here, right now, until either they or G _were_ dead.

Most people. 

Instead G uses one hand at the back of Sam's neck to pull him closer, setting his shoulders against the wall. He lets Sam pin the other one to that wall, lets Sam use all his weight to trap G there as Sam's fingers tighten and dig into G's neck and ride the edge of cutting off his air. He's even smiling - a twisted, crooked half-smile - in that split second before Sam's mouth is on his, tongue pressing in fast and demanding. 

You could call it a kiss but it's more something between that and a fight - and the one and only fight in the one and only _place_ G is willing to take losing over dying. Because he can lose. Because it actually doesn't make one fucking bit of difference if he loses here, and he knows it - if he doesn't think about it, if he lets it just bloom out under his skin like the adrenaline-fire, he _knows_ it. 

You put your life in the hands of anyone that can beat you. And here, now, it _doesn't matter_.

And when the kiss stops and G's head falls back against the wall, when Sam's fingers tighten until G _can't_ breathe anymore, until his rib-cage moves useless under his skin and his arm pulls against the hand pinning it to the wall without consulting his brain, it counts as an apology that's a lot more meaningful than the one he managed at the side of the road. Because that one was all words and defense and promises about shit that doesn't actually matter, where this - 

Because with no one else, for no one else would he stay here with his eyes closed and not care - much - that he can't breathe. For no one else would he just wait, let his lungs strain and just _wait_ until Sam lets his throat go and air and the high wash over G's skin and his brain and his nerves while he listens to each inhale rasp back in. 

And fuck, does his head swim, is his skin tight, does the world spin. And fuck, does it not matter, except how it does. How it does. 

Sam lets go of G's wrist. The fingers of his other hand loosen, palm flattening against G's throat and thumb stroking over G's carotid. His breath against G's ear turns G's inhale sharp and short when Sam says, "Sometimes - "

G turns his head, guides Sam's with the hand still resting against Sam's neck and says, "Yeah. I know." And then against Sam's mouth, "Shut up." 

This kiss is longer and slower and less likely to cut up the inside of either of their mouths with their own teeth. G relaxes against the wall, lets it and Sam both take part of his weight so that Sam's legs are between his and he and Sam are pressed together thigh to chest close enough that the buckle of G's belt digs into his stomach, not that he gives a damn. 

Sam's still holding his throat, thumb restless over the pulse point, like he needs reassurance G still has one. He pulls away from the kiss and tilts G's head back, mouthing, then biting just behind G's jaw and sending sparks down from there to the base of G's spine. 

Hedonism would encourage a repeat, a dozen, all of them a lot harder; what's left of G's rapidly dissolving common sense gets ahold of enough control to say, "We do have to work tomorrow, you know." 

Now and then, when G's coincidentally done something this kind of stupid - or more rarely when the universe just had it in for them that week, but has more considerate timing - they don't. Two or three days, arnica and some careful choices turn marks into something G might have picked up anywhere, because god knows he has enough excuses for bruises, scrapes and fuck-all else. Overnight, not so much. 

Sam's response is an irritated noise at the back of his throat; he shifts his hips against G's and G lets the back of his head hit the wall again. But he does - kind of regrettably - stop doing anything that's going to mark up G's neck. For the best, despite any regret: G's not enthusiastic about revisiting fifteen, with turtlenecks to try and keep this week's concerned adult from asking him questions he doesn't want to answer. That would be a bit much.

"Bed, G," Sam says, still right by his ear, and for a moment - after the sparks in his nerves die a little - G toys with the idea of a comment about the uses of polysyllabic language.

He thinks better of it and instead settles on, "You're a pretty effective roadblock."

He's not surprised when the hand at his throat drops to fist in his shirt and pull him away from the wall, or that this time the kiss ends with Sam pushing him a few backwards stumbling steps down the hall towards the bedroom. Sam says, "Not anymore," but the tension underneath the glare's shifted to something more like the look he gets when he's trying to be either responsible or impassive and not encourage G in whatever Sam's objecting to at the moment by laughing at him.

G laughs at him instead.

The hallway's short and G pulls his shirt off over his head as he walks. He pushes the door open, but Sam stops him by hooking fingers in G's waistband and pulling him back against the warmth of Sam's chest. G's hand rests on the doorframe and he's half-turning his head to ask what the problem is now, when Sam wraps one arm around his waist to hold him and then rests fingertips on the top-most bullet-scar.

G stops. Freezes, honestly. Stands completely motionless, movement and breath suspended for a second that feels very, very long while it feels like every single goddamn nerve in his body reroutes itself through the tiny patch of skin that can't actually feel anything anyway and the fractions of inches around it. 

He's torn. Just for a second. Torn between staying still and jerking away, drawing that line again, clear and hard, because even a year and a half isn't long enough to have settled on what those are or mean.

He doesn't. 

His fingers tense against the frame; Sam's trace the raised edges of that scar and its dent and then spans the distance between that one and the one below it between thumb and forefinger. 

G breathes. Carefully. He's ignored these, mostly. The exit-wounds are the ones that show the most and they're on his back; the others are easy to ignore. At least, they're easy to ignore when his partner isn't fucking counting them and hasn't finished with the one on the front of his shoulder, arm lying across G's collar and index and middle fingers pressing against scar-tissue. He's not really sure he's ready to stop ignoring them yet. 

Sam rests his forehead against the back of G's neck; G realizes he's got a hand tight around Sam's wrist and that breathing is unreasonably hard. He manages to keep his voice even when he says, "Sam," and then stops because he has absolutely no idea what to say next. Except _stop_ or _don't do that_ and he's dead fucking certain he doesn't want those coming out of his mouth. Not here and not now. 

"You want to stop acting like you're _trying_ to get more of these?" is what Sam says, more level than G could be if he kept talking, whole worlds of frustration just this side of resigned in there to hear. He moves his hand so that his fingers curve over G's shoulder instead and G makes his grip on Sam's wrist relax. 

"I'll think about it," G says, and can't resist, "I've gotten out of worse." 

"Hnh." Sam lets go and shoves G a few more steps towards the bed which, to be fair, is basically a bare mattress because nobody's using this place right now. G doesn't have to turn around to know what the look on Sam's face will be when he does. 

"What?" G says, as he gets the shaking head to go with that look and as he sits down on the bed, undoing his belt. "I have." 

Sam's kicked off his boots, finally, and is pulling his shirt over his head. "Why the hell do I put up with you?" he asks, crossing the room and pushing G down onto his back. 

"I bring meaning to your otherwise endlessly humdrum existence." G slides himself backwards across the fake-satined cover and doesn't bother trying not to smirk, figuring it a wasted effort. 

"No," says Sam, kneeling over him, "I'm pretty sure it's the Stockholm."

"Proving that I am a master of psychological control," G counters, lifting his hips to slide his jeans and underwear down to where he can kick them off and then reaching up to undo Sam's belt and the top button of his jeans.

"You're a master of facile bullshit, anyway," Sam says. G pauses, trying to keep track of words even though Sam's caught his wrists and pinned both of them this time, and scrounges for some mock-offense.

"Hey. I have it on good authority I'm actually impossible. In fact, that would be your - _fuck,_ Sam," G hisses, because Sam lets go of one wrist to pinch skin by G's hip hard and twist it, which counts as almost as bad as biting. Almost. Maybe worse, because if anyone sees his hip in the next three scheduled ops, something has gone very, very wrong, so absolutely no part of Sam's brain is going to be worried about leaving marks. 

"Shut up, G," Sam repeats, and adds, "And if you say 'make me', what I'll make you do is annoy the neighbours."

A completely empty threat, because G is many things but loud isn't one of them, not since he was an idiot kid, but G leaves it at, "Control freak," and then laughs when Sam mutters, "Definitely the Stockholm."

Sam twists the skin he's got again and G's laugh shifts to another sharp hiss. Sam leans more of his weight on the arm holding G's wrist and moves the other hand to press the knife-scar at G's hip into the bone. Pressure turns to burn and all of it, at this point, is going straight to G's dick. 

"Seriously," he manages, "if you're not going to let me get your pants off, get rid of them yourself." 

"You know what your problem is?" Sam says, in a thoughtfully conversational tone that does not bode well for G's remaining braincells. 

"According to you or according to Nate? Although you do occasionally overlap, even if he sounds more professional." The last word finishes breathless, Sam having finished tracing the scar and dragging his fingers up G's erection instead.

"Total lack of patience," Sam says, ignoring him but letting go of his other wrist before he says, "Keep your hands still." 

"Ah," G says, "that one." It's not the best retort he's ever come up with, but then most of the time Sam isn't alternately biting and sucking at his collar-bone (which, fortunately, is below the neckline of a good half his shirts, because he's pretty sure he doesn't have it in him to protest this time), or slowly jerking G off while he did it. If you could call it that. Maybe better to call it _the things Sam does with his hand on G's dick designed to reduce G's brain-function to an eggplant._

Not that G's going to stop him. 

There aren't very many times that G stops or lets go. Lets things happen _to_ him. And this, here - where "here" is a place in the mind rather than in space - is one of the maybe two. Maybe. One of maybe two places where he can. Since as far as he's been ever been able to tell that makes Sam happy, everybody wins. 

Delusions of disturbing anyone further away than the thickness of one wall are just that, but G's arches when Sam finishes marking his way down G's body, leaving scattered points of blood-under-skin over G's stomach and hips, and shifts from jerking him off to sucking him off. Sam's palms push flat against G's hips and his thumbs stroke along the creases of G's thighs until coherent thought is something that happens to other people, not G. 

The world is Sam's mouth on him and hands holding him down, the vague thought of keeping his own hands away (fingers digging hard into the mattress) and bright, shivering half-panic in his body that he'll never be anywhere near here without, but right now doesn't mean anything but breathlessness and tension that just tangles with everything else and makes it sharper. 

Sam Hanna is many things, and one of them is a fucking tease, but there are limits even to his self-control; he still leaves G mostly gasping air when he stops and slides back up to G's mouth. This time the hand around G's throat is the one Sam leans on to take a fraction of the weight that isn't on his knees, which doesn't help, the other hand most likely fumbling in the pocket of his jeans for a condom and lube. 

It takes him long enough that G's coughing as well as gasping when Sam lets go, every inch of G's skin alive to the sudden return of oxygen. He doesn't give Sam a chance to get worried about that, shifting so that he can get at Sam's belt and fly and finish what he'd started before Sam decided to combine tease and control-freak for a while. And by the time they've gotten rid of Sam's jeans and underwear G manages to say, "Hurry up already," and if his voice is rough it still gets him the expression he's looking for. 

It's been a while, for one reason and another. G doesn't care, but Sam always does, or maybe he's just in enough of a Mood that he's willing to try for making G beg. Probably, even. But there are some things that G can choose to do or not do, and then there are things that take a conjunction of god-knows-what more complicated than the last movie plot to contain the Illuminati, and that's one of them. And right now it's not there.

Still, Sam's slicked fingers feel good enough and undo him enough that by the time Sam pulls them out and leans over G again with the words _ready, G_ , G drags Sam's mouth down to his before the only letter of his name manages to actually sound and wraps his legs around Sam's waist. 

As opposed to wasting the time necessary to say . . .anything, really.

Sam won't choke G when they're actually fucking, refuses, says he doesn't trust himself to pay close enough attention and implies the fact that G doesn't really care means G's fucked in the head - and pretends knowing it's true anyway doesn't make him feel half warm and fuzzy and half something else he doesn't always like the name of. But by now he knows G's quirks just fine, and when G comes and it wrings him out, it's with Sam holding one wrist tight enough to burn and Sam's other hand tilting G's head back, Sam's breath and open mouth teasing at his throat. 

When Sam comes he says something G doesn't catch, doesn't bother to catch, and then shifts to let himself down to lie on top of G, warmth and weight and fingers worrying lightly at the pulse at G's wrist this time, instead of his throat. G idly runs his hand over the ink on Sam's shoulder, happy not to bother thinking just yet.

It's the buzz of a phone on vibrate that breaks the moment; G half-laughs and says, "That? Is not mine. Mine's in my coat pocket." 

"No," Sam says, "yours is on that ugly table in the hall because it fell out of your coat pocket when you dropped your coat on the floor."

"Whatever," G retorts, "that's still your phone."

"Text," Sam says. "It's a text, it only buzzed once."

They get up by degrees, G slightly slower; by the time he's doing up his belt Sam's dressed and unlocking his phone. G looks up at the snort of laughter and says, "What?"

Sam tosses him the phone and G catches it one handed before flipping it around to see the text from Michelle that read, _Hetty texted that G did something stupid, so I'm getting takeout and you should feed yourself_ and then a second that read, _make him eat, beer is not food_ and then finally, _get milk on your way home, we're out_.

"It's like she knows us," G says, bland, and tosses Sam the phone back. Where he stands just outside the bedroom door Sam catches it and then tosses G his balled up shirt. "And yes," he adds, "there is food at my house that isn't beer."

"I'll believe there's _calories_ at your house that aren't beer," Sam replies. "I'm not sure I'd stretch it all the way to calling it 'food'." He comes back into the room enough to offer G a hand and pull him to his feet. "If someone breaks into your house tonight, do me a favour and just shoot him and call the cops," Sam says, only half joking despite the smile.

"Someone breaks into my house tonight," G says, "I'm shooting him, going back to sleep, dumping the body somewhere in the morning, and not even bothering the cops." 

And he mostly means it.


End file.
